London Councils has joined forces with Ernst & Young and crowdfunding website Spacehive to raise additional resources for civic projects through the Internet.

The organisations have launched a new platform, London Ventures, which will allow people to come forward with ideas for civic projects and to appeal for funding online.

The Spacehive website has already helped fund several civic projects around the country, including an £800,000 community centre in South Wales.  More than 100 projects in London are already on the website and looking for funding.

The concept of crowdfunding, where people pledge to money towards a project and are only charged when the projects hit their funding targets, has already proved popular in the US.

‘By launching the world's first city-wide platform for crowdfunded regeneration projects London Councils aims to make it much easier for local people to get involved in transforming neighbourhoods across the capital,' said the chairman of London Councils' capital ambition project, Edward Lord.

Ernst & Young's government and public sector partner, Darra Singh, added: ‘Scaling this up across London's 33 councils provides a powerful tool for change and we are very much looking forward to helping make that happen.'